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Sun, Oct. 17, 2004 Singapore schools separate overweight children from classmates
SINGAPORE - The fight against obesity starts young in Singapore. Fat children are separated from their classmates and ordered to do more exercising until they lose weight. Ten-year-old Mona Siow has been trying to slim down for the last four years. Instead of joining her friends for recess, the fourth grader and other chubby students gather in the hall and follow a teacher's instructions to skip rope, run, and dribble a basketball. "I feel sad to be overweight when I look at people and they're so skinny and can wear so many clothes," said Siow, who must shed about 37 pounds before she can leave the program. At 4 feet 8, she weighs 128 pounds. As a member of a Singapore primary school's "Health Club" - where membership is compulsory for overweight children - Siow does special exercises on top of the regular physical education curriculum. Teachers monitor her height and weight every month. While the school does not put limits on what Siow may eat, teachers meet her parents regularly to recommend healthier ways to prepare their daughter's meals at home. Siow says she used to hate vegetables but has since grown to like them. More than a decade ago, this tiny but modern city-state's leaders decided that the best way to fight the war on expanding waistlines, and ballooning health care costs, was to begin with the generation growing up on a diet of fast food, television and computer games. The government created a school-based intervention program that includes rigorous exercise for plump children and recommendations on food sold in canteens, where the aromas of Western-style meals mingle with the sometimes spicy and exotic smells of local fare. Most schools in tropical Singapore have open-air lunchrooms catered by up to a dozen different private vendors selling a variety of foods from their stalls. This allows children from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds with varied dietary restrictions to choose between Chinese, Muslim, Indian or Western-style meals. About three-quarters of Singapore's 4.3 million people are ethnic Chinese. About 15 percent are Malay Muslims; the rest are mostly of Indian ancestry. Siow's vice principal, Ng Sock Hua, says no more than two of 10 dishes served to the children are preserved or canned. "No deep-frying, only grilled food allowed," she said. "And I've asked them to hold back on selling caffeinated and soft drinks." But reality isn't exactly as Ng describes it. As she gave a tour of the canteen, she noticed with some surprise that students were lining up for french fries and chicken nuggets, and snapping up cans of Coca-Cola at the drinks stall. She had a stern word with the stall owners about the rules, then walked away. "We try to monitor the vendors, but it's not easy to ensure that they're selling the right things," she says, shaking her head. "They tend to provide the food that kids like to eat." Unlike the tight controls it places on many aspects of everyday Singapore life, the government issues recommendations rather than regulations about the food sold in school cafeterias. In turn, the school passes down the instructions to canteen operators, but checking on them is sometimes sparse. The abundance of food and major cultural shifts over the last few decades have contributed to young people's bad eating habits, says Gladys Wong, president of the Singapore Nutrition and Dietetics Association. These habits are proving hard to break. The school's "health clubs" have reduced the rate of overweight students from 14 percent in 1992 to 10 percent in 2003, education ministry statistics show, but many, like Siow, don't shed the pounds. |